


Just This Jump

by 30MinuteLoop



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Related, Gen, M/M, post s1e7, pre s1e10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 04:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13240755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/30MinuteLoop/pseuds/30MinuteLoop
Summary: Paul Stamets knows a lot more about the future than he can tell anyone, including Hugh and Tilly. Filling in the gaps around Paul's state of mind during S1E8 and S1E9.





	Just This Jump

The first time Paul Stamets jumped, it felt like the entire cosmos was stuffed inside his brain, packed so tightly that he could only slowly, carefully, pull out just one thread of the details. He could see everything, everything, if he could just focus for long enough. Images, scenes, memories, histories, futures, and even scientific knowledge of the mycelium flashed through his brain. But he could not control most of what he saw, not that it mattered to him while he was there. It felt like the universe was in him and around him, and he had all the time he needed to understand it.

But in the aftermath of that first jump, he realized what Ripper must have gone through every time the tardigrade had been hooked up to the spore drive. Did Ripper, too, feel a little more exhausted every time, a little less deeply connected to the magic of the universe and a little more untethered to its physical reality?

He started feeling depleted, confused. Jumps took longer and longer to recover from. He was chasing an intoxicatingly intense mycelial high, but after the first couple weeks, each jump felt a little less special.

After one particularly exhausting jump, Paul stepped out of the drive chamber, an intense headache coming on. He looked up and - Wait, what? Yes, Captain Tilly was there at the console, giving him a concerned look.

He hadn’t seen her in years. Starfleet’s second-youngest captain, aboard the USS Genevieve. No one had told him she would be here, in his lab.

“What are you doing down here, Captain?” he asked, this fucking headache masking his happiness at seeing her again. But what possible reason would she have for coming to Earth while on an extended exploratory mission?

“Sorry, what?”

He blinked again. “What?”

“Did you just call me captain?”

It was 2256. Tilly was still his cadet on the Discovery. He was in engineering.

He was failing at maintaining this facade. Overwhelmed by the fear of being discovered, he lashed out. “That’s absurd.”

 

 

It became harder and harder to keep the changes he was experiencing from Hugh. One morning he woke up and looked across at Hugh sleeping and was convinced that it was the morning after their first night together.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” he said quietly to Hugh when he woke up, trying to mask an enormous smile.

“I know. It’s awful,” Hugh replied, “I wish we were back home. But we’ll get through this war.”

The glee he had felt was quickly replaced by horror. Paul turned away and got up abruptly.

He did what he always did to cope with things: work constantly, and intimidate other people into not talking to him. The smiles from his crew, which he had just started to get used to over the last few weeks, disappeared. It had been fun being that guy, but of course it couldn’t last.

 

 

It was during one of his last jumps before the 133 jumps that Paul saw the future again. 

Lorca, on the bridge, ordering a jump. The ship rattling dangerously and coming to rest in an uncharted area of space. 

The scene changed and he saw Hugh yelling at Lorca. "Why did you bring us here?"

Then he was dancing in the hallway with Burnham during one of the time loops. The vision felt fuzzy with the warmth of telling her one of his most fond memories.

Everything went dark. He knew he was in sickbay because he was wearing one of those drafty awful medical gowns. Unable to see, anger and confusion overwhelming him, he pushed Hugh away with all his strength. It turned out to be a lot more strength than he’d ever had before.

He was watching a recording of the bridge. The Klingon woman they had taken prisoner from the ship of the dead was standing with Tyler. Her words were fuzzy, but her malevolence toward the Discovery crew was nonetheless apparent. Tyler looked... different somehow. Angry. He had never seen Tyler look angry. 

A gauzy purple tendril of the mycelial network reached through a crack in subspace to take Discovery in its grasp. The ship flashed out of existence. 

Lorca beamed off the bridge of the Discovery, and appeared on the bridge of another ship, surrounded by familiar but blurred faces.

Primordial Earth. Lava erupting hundreds of feet high from volcanoes towering over tempestuous boiling seas. 

Hugh as an old man, sitting in a big armchair, a retired doctor reading medical journals from a kind of padd Paul had never seen before. Was that Paul sitting across the room from Hugh, or someone else? The pale old man sat at a small wooden desk, drawing in an old sketchbook. 

Himself, striding across engineering to kiss Hugh passionately. Hugh looking so worried. Muffled sound for several moments, and then Hugh's priceless, heartwarming smile. 

Standing on a stage at Starfleet Command. Some fuzzy admiral pinning a medal to his dress uniform. Words fading in and out as he tried to make them out.

"For your dedication to research… incredible body of knowledge about the mycelial network, we award you the Medal of Discovery."

Another admiral. "For 133 jumps that led to the end of the Klingon war, and… rooting out the impostor of Captain Lorca on the Discovery… the Medal of Honor."

Another admiral. "For selflessness and bravery… Starbase 46 incident… Medal of Valor." 

Sharp pain broke through his hard-won focus, and he swayed to the side. He felt Hugh's hand on his shoulder, and Hugh’s other hand grabbing his. "Paul? Are you okay?" 

He shoved Hugh away.

Back in sickbay again. Blind. Tilly gasping in horror next to him, a nurse holding him back. It's not about me!, he wanted to shout. Stop Lorca! But the words wouldn’t come. He felt the nurse guiding him to a nearby bed and pressing a hypospray against his neck, as his mind raced and he yelled with frustration. As his consciousness began to fade, he could only hope they understood.

 

 

Paul could barely open his eyes, but at least he felt more grounded. Where was he? When was he?

The spore drive equipment unhooked from his augments. He stepped down from the platform, walked slowly to the door, got out of the chamber.

This scene was familiar. Every step and movement was familiar. He had lived this time before.

Tilly was returning a spore canister to the wall for refilling. She had her hair in two coils at the base of her neck. Had he seen this hairstyle on her before? No, it was new, in this timeline.

This was not long before Lorca sent Discovery into that other timeline. That other universe? 

Paul slowly sucked in a breath. His skin was raw and aching under his augments. Probably time for some painkillers. He could go see Hugh, claim a headache from overwork. It wouldn’t even be a lie.

He made his way over to the main console. "Did we make it through in one piece?" 

She turned to face him, looking concerned at first but then putting on a cheerful face. "Everything's fine from an engineering standpoint, sir.” She knew about his condition already at this point, right?

"Very well, Cadet," he said, sighing. "I'm taking a break." 

"Okay, sir," she said in a smaller voice. Yes, she definitely knew what was going on with him. It was only because of her concern that he had even started taking breaks at all.

First, get some painkillers from Hugh. Then go back to his quarters, sit in the quiet and the dark, and try to figure out what to do with what he had seen.

 

 

When Lorca called him to his ready room, Paul suddenly recalled a future memory from his mycelial journey. Lorca would ask him to do an enormous number of micro-jumps. At this point, he had done fewer than 100 jumps total.

Every single jump, now, was draining. Magical when he was in it, though; he craved the sense of wonder and the things he got to see and feel. Dreadful afterwards, in that his mind and body went haywire: headaches, body spasms, dizziness, aches, and a distinct lack of anchoring in the present and real timeline. He was losing his mind to experience the cosmos and save lives.

In another fuzzy future memory, he had refused the micro-jumps. Lorca threatened him at phaser point and he had been about to give in when the Klingon ship of the dead began attacking. Eventually Discovery was destroyed - he recalled an explosion racing through engineering, the heat at his back, the crushing sense of failure.

The same feeling he had felt at the end of every single one of Mudd’s time loops. And just like he had had to do with Mudd, he had to give in, he had to agree, and he had to lie, to cover up what he was going to do.

*You* were in danger, he heard himself telling Hugh. He saw Hugh go silent, brought up short by his admission of concern.  

They were all in danger, of course. Tilly would never be captain if he gave up now. He would never grow old with Hugh. The Klingon war would continue. 

So Paul showed up in Lorca’s ready room. He watched Lorca explain his jump map. He thought of every single time he had lied to Hugh on this damn ship. Once again, he was putting up a front for the same reason, to save both their lives, to keep the crew alive, to make sure that Straal didn't die for absolutely nothing.

Paul knew what the captain was doing, although he didn’t remember how he knew this. Lorca was certainly pulling out all the stops to inflate his chief engineer’s ego.

“They could indicate alternative parallel universes connected to the mycelial network. And with more jumps, we could find a pattern, perhaps even the coordinates to reach them. You showed me this invention could take us to places that we never dreamed we could reach. Places far beyond our preconceptions of time and space.”

He just had to make Lorca believe that he was filled with a newfound respect for his captain. He channeled every sense of wonder he could remember, from a time in which his research was just about knowledge and passion. He filled his mind with the feelings of touching the stars, squeezing a million kinds of dirt between his fingers, seeing mushrooms mature nearly instantaneously, and hearing them *speak* to him in a language older than memory.

“Captain, I didn’t know you cared.”

He was probably laying it on too thick there. He had never said a single non-sarcastic thing to Lorca. (If he had, he had definitely meant it sarcastically.)

Perhaps Lorca would find Paul’s reaction believable, given that Lorca clearly *wanted* to elicit some respect and loyalty from him.

The manipulated becoming the manipulator.

 

 

Knowing what he had to do, knowing the way it would most likely turn out, didn't make facing Hugh and Tilly in engineering before the 133 jumps any easier. But of course Tilly could NOT leave well enough alone. She fucking blew his cover with Hugh. The ferocious anger he felt at this betrayal - it couldn’t be smoothed over with a mouthed “sorry.” 

"Hugh-" 

"There’s no time," he responded instantly, putting a medical cuff around Paul’s arm. “This cuff will let me treat you while you're in the chamber.”

Paul’s stomach clenched. Hugh was worried and angry enough now to totally emotionally detach.

He had thought he had things under control. Yes, he was going to sacrifice himself for glory and the greater good once again, and do exactly what Hugh feared. That would be difficult enough, but Hugh’s clinically detached refusal to *talk* to him sent Paul’s brain spiraling and his heart racing. What if in this timeline, he went through with the 133 jumps and it was still in vain?

Okay, okay, but he had seen enough times what happened if he refused the jumps outright. Even if things went wrong, maybe there would still be a way to make things right, some other timeline he hadn’t seen yet.

He got into the spore drive chamber. He waited.

They were ready to jump.  

_*Fuck.*_

His heart leapt into his throat, watching Hugh, waiting.

"I love you." The words spilled out of him, riding a wave of fear that crashed painfully against the walls of his skull as the first jump began. 

 

 

"Well, I'll always have you to thank for the view," he told Lorca, having promised him one last jump.

But, in this moment of lucidity, he knew where he stood, in space and time.

And he would never have had the profound and mind-altering joy of *knowing* the mycelial network, if it wasn’t for Lorca. Strange to feel grateful to this man who he couldn’t respect. In some other universe or timeline, Paul had built the spore drive in peacetime, but it had never quite worked without a tardigrade. He and Straal spent their whole lives finding applications for this technology. They never left Earth. The Klingons never encountered the Federation at the binary stars. He never met most of the Discovery crew.

Paul only hoped that he would get to savor those memories for the rest of his very long life. 

As far as Paul could see, going along with the last jump was the only way he would get to live, and stand on a stage at Starfleet Command, accepting medals with his very alive partner by his side and Burnham, Tilly, and Saru at his back. 

 

 

Just in case though... 

He strode across engineering as Hugh stepped away from the spore chamber. Closing the distance, he pulled Hugh’s lips to his. This was a man who had stood next to him for so long and through so much. Under his hands was the face of a man who had spoken up for him, challenged him and loved him - more than he had thought he could ever experience or deserve. 

After a few moments he pulled away, looking into Hugh’s eyes. 

“Mr. Stamets? Shall we dock this weary vessel?” Leave it to Lorca to interrupt every moment of peace he and Hugh could have together, right until the end.

“Yes, Captain.”

And now to pretend like everything was fine. He refocused on his partner’s face.

"There is a moon near Starbase 46, and I understand they have the most esteemed Kasseelian opera house, where they are currently performing La Bohéme," he told Hugh. All true. "I could be your date." 

And there was that smile, those crinkled eyes, giving him life even beneath his anxiety. He had seen that smile a thousand times before, and a thousand times more in his mycelial memory.

"You’re saying you'll actually sit through that with me?" 

_*I will sit through a million awful musicals with you, and I’ll love every minute of it because you’re there. If only we get through the next few weeks.*_

"Just this jump. And then I'm going to have a lot of free time on my hands." 

The lie. _*Just this one jump, then chaos, then a lot of free time. I hope.*_ If all the foggy parts of his mycelial memory didn't hide unseen dangers.

He had seen at least one timeline where doing this jump meant that they all lived. So yes, of course he was going to lie about it. What choice did he really have?

Just this jump.

 

One last jump.

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta'd - just felt like I needed to get this out before S1E10 reveals whether I'm within canon or not! :) Please leave comments!


End file.
